Reader questions Covid-19 restrictions

Posted

Dear Editor,

My dad died from side effects of an anti-rejection drug after an organ transplant, so does that mean no one should ever be able to get an organ transplant again?

My uncles died from heart disease, so does that mean all fast and fried food restaurants should be shut down, as well as the red meat and pork industries and devices that promote sedentary activity such as TVs, computers and cell phones? (Also note, someone dies every 37 seconds from heart disease - and this has killed millions, making it a much bigger threat than Covid.)

Several of my friends have died in car accidents. Does that mean all motor vehicles should be banned? (Note that hundreds of thousands die this way per year - again, making it a bigger threat than Covid).

I’ve had a few friends that died of suicide. Does that mean all knives, guns and coat hangers should be destroyed?

For a virus that has killed 0.001% of the population - about the same as the common cold - it is deemed so unsafe that there have been drastic measures taken like shutdowns, restrictions on number of patrons in a business, mandatory face masks, etc. Yet the government deems a prescription drug safe if it “only” kills five percent of people. (Survival rates of this virus, published by the CDC itself, are ninety-nine percent in those under the age of 50 and ninety-four percent in those older than 50.)

All of these deaths are sad, but the Covid deaths are not unusual for annual respiratory viruses such as the common cold (which kills the same amount each year as this mutated strain of a cold virus), the flu (which kills more than this annually), and other common annual respiratory viruses such as rhinovirus and adenovirus (both of which manifest the exact same symptoms as Covid and kill far more). All these viruses are opportunistic, meaning they severely affect or kill those with previously existing respiratory issues such as asthma or a history of smoking, those with weakened immune systems who can seem perfectly healthy on the outside and older folks. The moral of the story is that if each and every one of these deaths had been publicized in the same way as the coronavirus, the world would have ended long, long ago because everyone would have been too terrified to leave their houses. 

If masks actually worked, the virus never would have left China. (They have been wearing masks in public for years due to pollution.) 

I will end with a quote from Michael Crichton’s novel “State of Fear.”

“Has it ever occurred to you how astonishing the culture of Western society really is? Industrialized nations provide their citizens with unprecedented safety, health and comfort. Average life spans increased fifty percent in the last century. Yet modern people live in abject fear. They are afraid of strangers, of disease, of crime, of the environment. They are afraid of the homes they live in, the food they eat, the technology that surrounds them. They are in a particular panic over things they can’t even see - germs, chemicals, additives, pollutants. They are timid, nervous, fretful, and depressed...

“How has this world view been instilled in everybody? Because although we imagine we live in different nations — France, Germany, Japan, the US — in fact, we inhabit exactly the same state, the State of Fear.”

Sarah Nelson